Title 4 Passed House

Title 4: Nutrition (SNAP)

Title IV reauthorizes SNAP through 2031 but keeps the $187 billion in cuts that H.R. 1 made in 2025. Hot rotisserie chicken is now eligible nationwide. State cost-shifts begin. Local food purchasing for food banks gets new funding.

Funding

$985B baseline (10-year)

What Title IV actually covers

Title IV is the nutrition title. It contains the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the largest single program in any farm bill, plus food distribution programs (TEFAP, CSFP), school programs, food banks, and food security infrastructure.

This title is why the 2026 farm bill is politically poisonous. Title IV makes up roughly 70% of the farm bill’s total spending. And because of what happened in 2025, it’s now the centerpiece of a long-running fight over SNAP cuts.

The biggest thing to understand: H.R. 1 already cut SNAP

In 2025, the budget reconciliation law (H.R. 1, sometimes called “the One Big Beautiful Bill Act”) cut $187 billion from SNAP over the 10-year window. Those cuts include:

State cost-shifts: states now have to pay a portion of SNAP benefit costs for the first time in program history
Stricter work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents (ABAWDs)
Reduced state administrative flexibility
Limits on Standard Utility Allowance increases

The 2026 farm bill keeps all of those cuts in place. Title IV doesn’t restore any of the H.R. 1 cuts. Multiple Democratic amendments tried to reverse them; none made it into the final bill.

This is the single most important fact about Title IV. If you read about “SNAP cuts in the farm bill,” they’re almost always referring to the H.R. 1 cuts that this bill leaves untouched.

What Title IV does change

Reauthorization through 2031

SNAP and most related programs are reauthorized through September 30, 2031. That’s the standard farm bill window. No surprise here.

Hot rotisserie chicken is now SNAP-eligible nationwide

This was a floor amendment that passed 384–35, one of the most lopsided votes of the day. Currently, SNAP rules let recipients buy cold prepared foods (cold rotisserie chicken, rotisserie chicken in the deli case after it cools below a certain temp) but not hot prepared foods, with a few state-level exceptions (Arkansas got a USDA waiver in 2025).

Title IV makes hot rotisserie chicken eligible under SNAP nationwide. Just hot rotisserie chicken, not all hot prepared foods. The amendment was sponsored by Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR) and Arkansas’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders had pushed for the federal expansion.

State authority to outsource SNAP certification operations

Title IV gives states new authority to outsource SNAP certification, the income verification and eligibility determination process, to private contractors. This is a structural change, not a budget change. States that have struggled with case backlogs will likely use this; states with strong public sector workforces may not.

Local food purchasing grants for food banks

A new program funds grants for the procurement and distribution of locally produced food. This builds on the COVID-era Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement (LFPA) that the Trump administration ended in early 2025. Title IV authorizes $1.196 billion in discretionary appropriations for nutrition title programs over FY2027–FY2031, with about $1 billion in estimated outlays.

Expanded SNAP nutrition incentives

The list of food categories eligible for SNAP nutrition incentives (programs like Double Up Food Bucks, Healthy Foods Incentive) is expanded. Specific commodity categories aren’t named in the bill text, USDA will rule-make the eligible categories.

Changes to food distribution programs

The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) is reauthorized.
The Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP) is reauthorized.
Food bank infrastructure grants are expanded.

What didn’t make it in

The single biggest fight in Title IV was over what didn’t make it in. Democrats proposed:

Restoring the $187B in H.R. 1 SNAP cuts
Delaying state cost-shifts
Eliminating expanded ABAWD requirements
Restoring eliminated Trump-administration nutrition programs

None of these passed. Republicans uniformly opposed reopening reconciliation-locked provisions. The result: 14 Democrats voted yes, but most Democratic opposition came from this title.

There were also Republican amendments that didn’t make it:

Restricting soda and sugary beverages under SNAP, proposed but not adopted at the federal level (several states have USDA waivers)
Stricter income verification beyond what H.R. 1 already requires
Mandatory work requirements for parents of school-age children

Programs covered under Title IV

Who Title IV matters for

42 million SNAP recipients: what the bill does not change matters more than what it does. The $187B in cuts from H.R. 1 stays.
State governments: the cost-shifts kicking in are real money. Texas, California, Florida, New York will see significant new state-level expenditures.
Food banks and food pantries: local food purchasing grants are a real opportunity, but they don’t replace SNAP.
Grocers and convenience stores: hot rotisserie chicken eligibility is a meaningful new revenue stream.
Restaurant industry: the rotisserie chicken precedent could expand to other prepared foods in future bills.

What’s next

Senate Democrats led by Klobuchar (D-MN) and rank-and-file members from high-SNAP-population states will push hard to delay the state cost-shifts. They’re unlikely to succeed in fully reversing H.R. 1 cuts (that would require new reconciliation), but they may delay implementation timelines or carve out exceptions for specific populations.

The hot rotisserie chicken expansion will almost certainly survive. The local food purchasing program may be expanded.

If you’re tracking the bill from a SNAP recipient’s perspective, the most important pages are:

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